Intelligence :: 081
Goooooood mooooooorniiiing!
Sculpture by Tania Font
Un-AI
"Claude, review my resume for typos and formatting." "Sure! [loading. . . ] The first item is your experience ending in 2024. You should say '- Present' for consistent formatting because the current year is 2024." "Actually, Claude, it's 2025." To which it replies, "Oops, you're right. My mistake."
Mistake? THIS is intelligence? You're supposed to be a computerized intelligence system. Is it possible that it could make a mistake as simple as getting the year wrong?
Wait...maybe it was even taught to make mistakes on purpose to seem more human. Ok that idea is exciting to me. Not necessarily that we're trying to make LLMs feel more human but that it reminded me that making mistakes IS, inherently, human.
There's something relatable and human about not knowing everything. And every time my kids ask me a challenging question (e.g. why don't adults have stuffies? what does the tooth fairy do with all the teeth? why can't we pee in the pool?) I'm reminded that I don't have all the answers and that's ok. It feels inherently human to explore and learn and fail in order to figure things out for ourselves.
That's what I want to explore this month. The opposite of AI. What does it mean to be intelligent? Or at least something different than artificial intelligence: real, human intelligence. I'm thinking about the things that wouldn't make sense for robots to do, but we as humans do– Being silly and weird and funny, inefficient on purpose, considering long term consequences, changing our mind, and creating for fun not just curating answers. Let's get weird, shall we?
Humans of New York post from 2016
To Weird is Human
The great thing about AI and computers is that they will never be human. And the great thing about humans is that we are capable of more than computers. This was the fundamental principle of one of my favorite talks at the DO Lectures last month by David Mattin.
AI will continue to take over spaces that can be automated, he explains. But the things that make us as humans will continue to only become more valuable: creativity, holding space to listen and support, love, humor, and weirdness.
Yes, weirdness. ChatGPT is great at scraping the large language model it was fed and responding with a watered-down, soft vanilla average mashup of answers. They're all ok. But likely none of them are weird.
My friend Jillian Richardson has been growing a following on LinkedIn after one weird post went viral. "Be weirder on LinkedIn," she begs. And continues to post.
AI can do mass content. AI can deliver right answers (sometimes). But AI can't give you the weird personality that is you. Get weird. Get noticed. In a world where so much of the copywriting and content out there is AI generated, what stands out is the weird stuff.
The funny, unexpected things that AI could never generate because it's just choosing averages. "The more unhinged you become, the clearer it is that AI was not involved. All that insanity came directly from your brain. Take that, Claude," Jillian explains
I'm sorry to say that this is the new work. For those of us identifying as creative people, the work of creating new things in this world is to create things that feel even more human. More weird. More funny. More heartfelt. In the same way that impressionism emerged in response to photography, a new kind of human-centered art is starting to emerge (and feel necessary) in the face of AI. And it's going to be a little silly. Hachacha. Beeboobop. Karachi Batchi Mo Machi. (Me my mo matchi)
Time to get weird...
Art and its code by Sumit Sijher
"I Have No Idea" is not "I Have No Ideas"
"What happens to someone after they die?" Golda asks one Tuesday morning on the way to camp.
I freeze in my own fear of facing questions I've chosen not to think about. But here I am, needing to provide some answer... on the spot, no less. "Great question! Well... when someone dies their body is usually buried in the ground and after a loooong time it becomes dirt and part of the earth again. And some people believe in a spirit or soul. But no one's really sure what happens. What do you think happens?"
I exhale, and feel confident in my half answer. And we talk about it for another minute before the topic switches to the current song playing in the car.
There will be more conversations like this in my future: feelings, bullies, puberty, identity. Imagining the best version of these conversations, when they happen I've already prepared answers, practiced, and am ready for a formal, sit-down conversation. But that's not how things work. With kids, I have traded the need to be articulate and practiced for "I need to be ready to go, whenever." In reality, we need more room to improvise and embrace the conversational nature of big questions.
I'm not an encyclopedia (ok, boomer...) ChatGPT. I don't need to have all the answers on-demand. I can be one of many resources for my kids. I'm learning that as they get older, as we all did too, parents are not the only source of truth. I can be a facilitator to navigate challenging questions and talk through what might be true, what might our beliefs as individuals, and what our values as a family are. I can teach my kids how to look things up and find things out for themselves.
I prioritize finding it out figuring it out and talking it out. I don't always know the answer and that's ok.
Fear as a Motivator
Every Friday, I have a wrap up ritual where I review the week, plan the next one, and look over my goals and lists.
It might not be surprising to know that I have a long lifelist. I add to it more than I cross things off.
And yesterday, I reviewed it and realized something: there are some things that I'm actively avoiding doing because I'm afraid. And then other things I've done because I'm afraid.
I'll explain. Some things in the short term feel scary to do because I'm not sure what will change. Or I'm scared that I'm not capable of the commitment and work required. Things like writing a book. Starting a business. Committing to a niche in my business. Doing intense networking and cold outreach versus just applying for a job. Those feels scary in the short term. So I procrastinate. Maybe I'll do them at some point. But not now.
And then there are things that I have done because I'm afraid of the long term consequences. The deathbed regrets and future guilt that I anticipate if I don't do these things. Skydiving. Driving 4 hours to see an eclipse. Get married, have kids. Work on Caveday full time. I don't want to be afraid of getting old because I'm holding on to my youth like an uncashed winning lottery ticket. I'm holding it every day and if I don't use it today, I won't get to.
So much of our choices are about weighing two fears. Going alone to a party. Is it scarier to endure small talk and awkwardness of new people... or scarier to be the kind of person that never meets anyone? A recruiter calls. Is it scarier to leave the job and industry you're comfortable in... or scarier to imagine that you'll be aged out of your job and not be able to find work in 15 years?
If you were a computer or an AI agent, you're not thinking about fear at all. Share a few ideas. Edit my blog post. Give me feedback. Craft this hard email. And it does. Plan my future. Outline my book. Poke holes in my business plan. Research areas for growth. As humans, we use fear as an excuse to not do something. But for most of us, fear can also be a powerful motivator. And, lucky us, we can use AI to help us do the hard thing. We have a powerful tool to help us face our fears. What's the excuse now?
Reset Your Mindset
I'm ten years old walking into my fourth grade classroom. The orange carpet complements the bookshelf full of colorful book spines and on every desk is a bright green math book. Before we open it to a new chapter, my teacher tells us something: "We're starting fractions today–most people hate fractions, but you don't have to." If you think fractions are fun and easy, they actually will fun and easy.
I think about that a lot. Definitely a longer tail than Ms. Diamond intended when she said it.
Attitude changes everything. There's a famous story about a college student who arrived late for a math class. Seeing a problem on the board he assumed was homework, he went home that night and solved the proof. His professor was dumbstruck the next day, having put the problem on the board as an example of an unsolvable problem. If you think it's possible, it becomes possible. Whether you think you can or can't... you're right.
The computers out there can't change their mindset. (They don't even have a mind of their own to change.)
And with that, I'll close the fridge. Happy back to school season for those that celebrate. I always love hearing from you– what you disagree with or what resonated. Thank you for spending a little bit of your weekend with me.
Refridgeyalater,
Jake
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A few topics I cut from this month: dealing with rejection, taking care of people, episodic learning (learning from experience), and rupture and repair in relationships
The Email Refrigerator is a monthly delivery of essays, poetry, imagery, and thoughts, written and curated by Jake Kahana. Why a refrigerator? Well, it's where we look for snacks, a little freshness, and where we hang the latest, greatest work. And besides, "newsletter" sounds like spam.